


Toothpaste

by Antiquity



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Growing Up, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7482312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiquity/pseuds/Antiquity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Granny Pinako had always had the uncanny ability to quash Edward’s foolish hyperboles or idealistic notions. Only later does he realise she actually knows what she's talking about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toothpaste

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some fluff! Unfortunately it was not inspired by a sudden epiphany at the bathroom sink, but I hope you enjoy it anyway :)

Granny Pinako had always had the uncanny ability to quash Edward’s foolish hyperboles or idealistic notions. Most of it was the biting practicality any farmwife developed over the course of a life led on the land, and part of it was realism deliberately phrased in order to irritate the elder Elric to the greatest possible degree.

“Hey Granny, I’m going to find the biggest and best pumpkin for mum’s spring pie!”

“Don’t be silly, Ed, you know they’re out of season. Take your brother and go buy some squash.”

“Granny, can you fix this bird? Mum said she couldn’t!”

“Its wing is broken, Ed. It’ll never fly, and for a bird, that just means a slow death. Leave it here, and I’ll deal with it.”

“Guess what, Granny? I transmuted a whole toy train today!”

“Next thing to do is find yourself some height, bean.”

“Hey Granny, the soldiers passing through the station had to change their boots for the desert!”

“You stay away from those warmongers, Ed. Soldiers aren’t fit for anything but taking life.”

Looking back upon the memories of his childhood, Edward normally skirts away from those collected in the months after his mother’s death. One of the only clear, safe reminiscences of that time involves himself, his brother, Winry and Granny, one sunny afternoon at the Rockbell house. Winry had just finished telling him and Al about a story where a princess had been locked in a tower and guarded by a dragon, awaiting a handsome knight so bold as to rescue her, and Al was rolling on the floor laughing while Edward pantomimed being violently ill. 

Over her granddaughter’s indignant shrieks, Pinako had remarked, “Don’t pin all your hopes on knights and quests, boys, or on love at first sight. It’s only true love if you can stand together at the bathroom sink and brush your teeth every morning for the rest of your life.”

Edward, Alphonse and Winry looked at her, aghast, and as Winry promptly burst into a feverish rebuttal of this unromantic anticlimax, the brothers looked at each other, laughed, and launched their own quest to secure the last oatmeal cookie. Alphonse won, only because Edward told himself he was just too damn nice to his brother.

He sighs to himself, twenty years later, rolling his eyes at the naivety of children; specifically, the naivety of intelligent children without an intellectual equal nearby. He and Al surely must have been little horrors. Edward sighs again and snickers, before grabbing his blue toothbrush from next to the red one and squeezing out a stripe of minty toothpaste onto the bristles. 

“It’sh only true lo’ if you can shtand at de shink efery day,” Edward comments around a mouthful of froth, and Roy casts him a bewildered look as he scrapes the last of the shaving foam off his cheek.

“What are you on about?”

“Nuffin’,” he says, watching his lover splash his face clean and then pat it dry with a handtowel embroidered with lilacs, of all things, though Roy maintains that the shop assistant switched the parcels on him.

“If you say so, love,” Roy responds, long inured to Edward’s habit of remarking on the first random thought that crosses his mind, and presses a kiss to his temple as he ambles back into their bedroom to start getting ready for the day. 

Edward sighs again, but this one is a deeply satisfied sigh, an exhalation of great contentment, and he grins at himself in the mirror, toothpaste foam and all.


End file.
